The Cheap Student Budget

What is $750.50?
a) A lot of money
b) About what I would earn in a month if I didn't spend any of it
c) What somebody spent on lotto tickets today.
d) All of the above.

WHAT THE HELL. I couldn't get over it. This dude handed over $755 in a myriad of fifties and twenties. Wow. It would have been a glorious sight to behold, if I hadn't have been made to count it.

In my opinion, there are many more exciting things to spend $750.50 on. For instance, I could pay off my crippling laptop debt. Video games. Boutique fashion. One hell of a night out, with drinking, a personal performance by Eric Clapton and midget strippers imported from Mexico. Damn, a trip to Mexico with delicious taco meals every night! You have to wonder how rich this guy is to be able to spend that much on little pieces of paper with numbers on them.

I am disgustingly poor by comparison. I earn about $200 a week, most of which goes towards boring things like food (as I am a Hungry Hungry Hippo of a woman), petrol, taekwondo fees and my aforementioned crippling laptop debt.

"I don't know how you get by with $200 a week," said Georgia, my best friend and allmighty barista, whose recent paycheck made me look at her in a whole new light.

It isn't as horrible as you think. Let me explain to you, dear readers, the Cheap Student Budget.

- You can get a perfectly decent meal for $5. Asian food is a winner here.

- If you drive, fill up your petrol on Tuesdays and pester whoever buys your groceries to steal their fuel dockets. Also, try and get the environmentally friendly fuel because it's cheaper. Environmentally friendly fuel + fuel dockets = hooray. Oh, and because of the environment and stuff. Save the trees and shit.

- Sales and secondhand are your friends. Never, ever buy anything that isn't on sale. It's just not right. It's also handy to date the manager of a store (sorry guys, Dan and the Cotton On 25% discount vouchers are MINE). The red label will guide you, young one.

- Need to get drunk to forget the horrible pain that is your life? Drinking at your friend's house is cheaper than buying drinks at a club and catching a cab home. Especially when said friend is a dirty alcoholic and has an impressive liquor stash (I'm looking at you, Ben).

- Stuck between two things you want to buy? Pick the cheapest one no matter what.

- Screw supporting the entertainment industry. Download, download, download. My policy is that you should support smaller bands, particularly local acts, by buying their CDs, but let's face it -- mp3 downloading isn't exactly going to reduce the members of Metallica to starvation. Not that I like Metallica, but, you know.


Good luck, prospective tight-asses!

In related news, work was devillish today. I had the dreaded six hour shift, which is slightly short of having a lunch break and only allows me one ten minute break. Plus, I was surviving on three hours of sleep. It got to the point where I thought the till keyboard looked like a nice pillow and tried to figure out how to strategically arrange piles of Tax Packs into a bed.
I could not sleep last night for the life of me. It was one of those nights where I had too many thoughts, even when I was trying not to think about anything

"Empty your mind, empty your mind.... wow, cool, this is working. Oh crap, you're thinking about thinking about nothing. Way to completely miss the point of the exercise, idiot."